Innovation CHEF

So we are back with another season of RTE’s Dragon’s Den. We had lots of fun last year and I am very glad to have it back again. It might not be the greatest show on earth but it is encouraging and thought provoking at times.

(I actually don’t watch TV  so there may be brilliant stuff on all the time and I wouldn’t know. I heard this was on by hearing a piece on George Hook’s radio show this afternoon. I had been at the American Chamber of Commerce Presidents Lunch which is a different story)

New Season, Same Dragons,  Same laboured puns in the voiceover, ah well. Sarah is writing a book but is she going to be investing?

First up : Jennylynd Jones and her Caribbean food company. In the style of Levi Roots she was looking for cash to further her Caribbean Sauces, cook books and general enterprise. Sounds like a good idea and she was putting some good numbers of sales in front of the panel. Secret recipes are the oldest form of IP and can be the most durable, just ask Coca-Cola. The Dragons seemed fairly impressed and it was a confident pitch. Although having 10 years experience as a food scientist working in R&D and Quality Assurance some of the Dragons seemed most impressed by her frock. She ended up giving away 50% equity in return for 40K. Probably a good deal as this kind of product needs (supermarket) doors opened for it to succeed.

Pitch two was form Daniel,

His product was the Marilyn. This was an air circulation system that you put your clothes horse on top of. Consuming the same power as a 40Watt bulb it could dry a shirt in a couple of hours. I actually was intrigued to see whether this actually had solved any technical constraints and whether there was any innovation here other than just being a couple of floor mounted vertical fans. Alas the program didn’t focus there but more on Daniel’s,hesitant delivery (pure nerves I suspect), the uninspired design and some dodgy assumptions on the go-to-market front. It did seem a little underdeveloped both as a product and as a business. A slimmer, lighter, quieter version could find a niche I suspect. This wasn’t Daniel’s time and he walked away empty handed.

Next up were Mark and Andrew. http://www.greenflame.ie/

The product was a Carbon Neutral Briquette: an artificial log for the fire. As I was watching this I kept thinking “why not buy real logs?” but that wasn’t the point this is a log made from a fast growing low input crop called Misacanthus. These logs are lower ash and a Cleaner and Greener Alternative to a peat briquette.  Sound enough idea. More sustainable biomass fuels, brilliant.

Where the pitch ultimately fell down was in the structure of the business. The business is owned currently by the 35 growers of the crop. A new investor, and the lads were looking for €200K, would be the only one exposed to increases in the cost of crops that would be good for the growers but less good for the profits of the business. This seemed to be too rich and too risky for the Dragons. There didn’t seem to be anything amiss in the business,it just seemed the wrong deal was on the table.

Three Quickies:

• Gerard wanted 30K to set up a “dating” agency between those wanting BER certs for their homes and BER certifiers. Nope
• Cathal wanted 50K for an easy install blind. Nope
• Two blokes wanted 100K for a gift website (of which there are plenty). Nope

Last Up was Herbie.

Herbie was a Barvarian, by way of Donegal. His product was the dead simple solution to the unsightly interface where the soil pipe from your toilet goes into the wall or floor. It is a little plastic circlet that clips on and covers everything up. Pretty and Simple. Much inquiry was made into Herbie’s 26 years in Ireland, pike fishing in Cavan, flights from Munich; and why not, he seems like a good guy. Product wise it seemed strong if easy to copy. I would be confident that the unit cost of the moulded part could be made way way cheaper. Niall the Dragon was right in his assessment that everyone probably could use at least one.  It probably would have a  decent run if it got the right branding and promotion but it feels almost like something you might get for free with your bathroom suite.

Absolutely fair play to Herbie for spotting the gap and getting a product out there and to Gavin who gave him 25K for 40% equity.

I suggest we all go buy one

Previous reviews are here:

Dragons Den week 2
Dragons Den week 3
Dragons den week 4
Dragons den week 5
Dragons den week 6

Excellent Speech by the New President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ireland.

Lionel Alexander urged politicians and business leaders to ensure that opportunities are taken. He encouraged whole Ireland thinking and not regional sub division, after all Ireland is a small place and duplication has a cost. Lionel spoke about the creation of an “Enterprise Foundry” and of having universities “lift the bar”

“…I have great confidence in the future of Ireland and its people. With the strong base of foreign direct investment we have a significant competitive advantage and we have a large pool of very talented people with the grit and determination to lead Ireland back to prosperity.

“If we stop looking over our shoulders at the Celtic Tiger but focus firmly on how our present advantages and current opportunities can deliver a better future we cannot but succeed.”

Special post!!!!
Thinking about Innovation training? Great offer on Innovation training in December
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Some interesting lectures in Trinity next week.

Tim Draper one of the best venture capitalist in Silicon Valley – he’s famous for his investments in Skype,  Hotmail and Overture to name a few!! also Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, will deliver a public lecture in Dublin on Friday November 27th in association with Silicon Republic, the Dublin City Enterprise Board and the Digital Hub.. Both lectures are on in Trinity on Friday 20^th& 27th November,  7.30pm at the Edmund Burke theatre ( in through Nassau st. entrance). For any-one intested you can buy tickets at http://www.lecturesireland.com/

Forfás (Ireland’s national policy advisory body for enterprise and science) has just published a new report called “Skills in Creativity, Design and Innovation”
It is 129 pages of definition, data, discussion and direction and makes pretty interesting reading. Link is below.

The report refers to Ireland’s past “outstanding economic performance” coming from a position of having:

• Strong Supply of Skills
• English
• Low corporate tax rates
• Low costs (relative to other political stable countries)

The expert group behind the report has compiled a lot of data and reports to give a picture of Ireland’s Innovation performance relative to other countries. For example this table are measures of Innovation on Which Ireland has a High or Low Rank on a List of 34* Countries EEA plus US, Japan, Turkey.

That’s not our unique value proposition now and the report rightfully acknowledges that countries that we might have thought of as “low cost competititors” are aiming for the same high added value smart economies that Ireland has targeted.

The expert group makes eight recommendations:

1. The main responsibility for levelling up performance at third and fourth levels lies with colleges themselves. All Irish higher education institutions should set objectives in developing creativity and capability to innovate among their students as a part of their strategic plans and should regularly review progress against those objectives.
2. Higher Education Institutions should make a major effort to break down the disconnect between SET and business disciplines.
3. Support for the work of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment in reforming second level education.
4. To assist Irish businesses in assessing their skills in creativity, design and innovation using the frameworks presented in this report, and material from other sources, and to help them to respond to opportunities and deficiencies that they identify, an audit tool for this purpose should be developed.
5. Skillnets and its stakeholders should place an increasing emphasis on funding networks that target skills in creativity, design and innovation.
6. While continuing to develop and promote the use of standard modules in personal development across different subject areas, FETAC should encourage providers of further education and training to adapt the content to the subject matter of each course.
7. Organisations such as Enterprise Ireland, industry representative bodies and relevant higher education institutions should consider introducing a placement programme for Product Design graduates, broadly similar to the existing Export Orientation Programme.
8. Agencies including Enterprise Ireland and the Higher Education Authority, as well as higher education institutions, should support the development of a strong design skills development infrastructure, building organically on the existing infrastructure.

Very interested in what the Irish Innovation community makes of this.

There clearly is a lot to welcome here and to think about.

I’m not sure an audit tool is exactly what Irish Business has been looking to improve innovation, perhaps neccesary but not sufficient, given the otherwise meaty stuff in the report.

Recommendation 5 is of particular interest given the recent debate on Innovation Networks in Ireland.

pdf here.

Following up from a post from Brendan Hughes and some conversation on Twitter. I thought I’d try to list out all the Innovation Networks in  Ireland. I really didn’t find too many formal networks dedicated to Innovation. I have an informal one of Innovation trainers and IP folks as do many of us.

I must be missing loads though.
Please help out by adding ones I’ve missed.

The LinkedIn ones
Innovation Ireland is pretty new with 487 members already. Pretty Healthy discussions too.
Service Design & Innovation is more focused ( smaller too )
North West Science and Technology partnership is a good regional group.

There are a huge amount of global Innovation groups in LinkedIn.

First Tuesday have a number of smaller networks from their ZIRCOL web.
innovate Network, Big Ideas network, Creative Network Dublin

There is the Construction Enterprise Innovation Network from the IRDG who are looking for members for the Enterprise Innovation Network. The Irish Software Association (ISA) has one but no website apparently.

Help me build this!

From Miriam:

Dublin City Enterprise Board’s LINK! Network for Start-up Businesses to your list. Meets last Tuesday of the month. Check out http://www.dceb.ie for details.

From Siobhan:

Ideagen is a networking roadshow that will take place in 4 locations around the South-East region between October and December 2009.

From Mitchell

There is a new network for creative industries in Dublin called CreativeD (www.creatived.ie). It’s aim is to help Dublin establish itself as centre of creativity and innovation, and is run in partnership with Dublin City and County Enterprise Boards, Dublin City Council and the Digital Hub.